It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

Dear Mark,

My wife Helen and I (both 58 years old) have enjoyed MDA for about two years now, but have been following a ketogenic, Primal lifestyle for approximately three years. We are getting better at practicing it, understanding it, promoting it and feeling its health benefits by the day.

We not only eagerly await your daily posts, but the weekly success stories as well. They are motivational and inspirational, but also sometimes quite emotional, too. We have not only one, but many success stories within our circle of family and friends. Here is my attempt to relay my experiences to you as briefly as possible.

Every day, I get links to interesting papers. It’s hard not to when thousands of new studies are published every day and thousands of readers deliver the best ones to my inbox. And while I enjoy thumbing through the links simply for curiosity’s sake, they can also seed new ideas that lead to research rabbit holes and full-fledged posts. It’s probably the favorite part of my day: research and synthesis and the gestation of future blogs. The hard part is collecting, collating, and then transcribing the ideas swirling around inside my brain into readable prose and hopefully getting an article out of it that I can share with you.

Many, if not most of us, have experienced at least one moment when we truly thought we were going to die. Maybe it was a plane ride from hell. Or a seemingly final diagnosis. A grim combat situation – or many.… A frightening near miss on the highway. A serious assault. Even a childbirth gone suddenly and inexplicably awry. Whatever the event, the experience can set off everything from tearful surrender to abject terror. It begs the question: is there anything quite so Primal as the fear of death?

I occasionally get mail about the fear of death. I believe we all think about it – probably much more than we let on, and it doesn’t surprise me at all when people write about it. When you open the door to discussion of innate instinct, I think it’s a logical thought that comes up.

The world is a maelstrom of choices. From smartphones (iPhone or Android?), diets (Primal or Paleo or vegan?), cars (electric or gasoline, SUV or sedan?), health plans (PPO, HMO, or health savings account?), to entertainment (TV or Twitter or YouTube or Xbox or Netflix), we’ve never had more options from which to choose. This is supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to be liberating. Having more options is supposed to help us make better decisions. But in reality, something called decision fatigue gets in the way.

For this week’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions. First up, what could be causing a reader’s peripheral neuropathy? Could it be gluten, B12 and/or B6 deficiency, diabetes, or inadequate vitamin D? The second question concerns homemade pasta, a beautiful woman, and a dilemma: do you indulge in the former to make the latter happy? My answer may surprise you, or it may not. I’m not sure. But I think you’ll find it helpful regardless. And finally, can carbs and ketosis co-exist? They certainly can, but there’s a little trick to make it work.

The Primal Blueprint Podcast

Interviews with Mark Sisson and other health experts. Audio versions of select Mark’s Daily Apple posts each week. “Best of MDA” recordings. Fresh, lively content to help you stay at the cutting edge of Primal living!